Body Beautiful

Visitors to the BNHV Can Explore the Evolution of Beauty at New Exhibit

    By: Katherine Guenther

 

        Visitors to the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village are in for a surprising new exhibit: Body Beautiful, an eccentric collection documenting the evolution of female beauty. The exhibit has everything from 1960’s breast implants and a 70’s jumpsuit to a collection fancy hats that would put Jackie O. to shame.
“We just had the opening 2 nights ago and there was about 85 people here, so, that was a really big turnout for us,” said Kayla Shypski, the BNHV’s Assistant Curator, and one of the leaders of this project.

1930s Perm Machine

 “The exhibit idea was already an existing idea”, she said, “but when I came on board we decided that we really wanted to do it.” While the project itself was started last fall the creation of the exhibit was started only two months ago.
“We really pushed to get it ready,” Shypski said, “We started in the space two months ago but I’ve been researching it, and finding artifacts for it for many more months.”
A crowd favorite at the exhibit’s opening is a strange metal contraption with silver tentacles that hangs like a weeping willow.
 “It’s funny that people hooked themselves up to electricity with that – with wet hair,” said Museum Events Coordinator, Jaime Brawdy. As the placard on the wall beside the strange machine will explain the device is actually a Frederic’s hair perm machine from the 1930s. The piece is one of Brawdy’s favorite artifacts in the exhibit.

Dress from 1884

“I used to be a hairdresser,” said Brawdy, “I definitely like all the hair items.” One of the oldest artifacts in the museum is a fancy purple dress complete with bustle from 1884. The dress is part of a series that documents women’s dress clothes from the 1880s to the 1970s. The exhibit also makes use of the museum’s vast textile and clothing collection.
“A lot of the textiles in there are from our collection. We have one of the biggest textile collections, I think, in New York State,” she said.

Collection of Hats

To gather the 170 artifacts needed for the exhibit the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village reached out to other museums such as the Buffalo History Museum, but also reached out to the Buffalo-Niagara community.
“We put out an ad out and we say, ‘looking for hair curlers or girdles or we’re looking for this from this time period. If you have them please contact the museum’, and a lot of people, you’d be surprised, come forward with it,” said. The museum, which has a strict budget, relies on these donations and its vast network of fellow museums to create exhibits.
“We don’t really pay for a lot of things. We don’t have that in the budget. If we take a new item in it’s usually because they want to give it to the museum,” said Brawdy. Much of the exhibit was created by the museum’s small staff.
“It’s very difficult especially when you’re trying to stay within budget,” she said.

The BNHV offers many interactive games for children.

“We do everything in house,” said Shypski, “We make all of our own cases. We made the manikin mounts. We do send out for the plexi [Plexiglas] and everything but most of it is done in here by myself or the head curator and our maintenance men.”
The exhibit is a refreshing look at history that looks at the evolution of beauty with a sense humor and perspective.
 Kayla Shypski said with a laugh: “Where else can you go in Amherst to just, look at some breast
                                                                                                          implants on the wall.”

The exhibit runs from May until 2015 at the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village at 3755 Tonawanda Creek Road in Amherst. The museum’s hours are:

Tuesday - Friday, 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, 10:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m.